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I set down his hand, now sanitized, and put mine on my bare thighs before shrugging. “I was awake.”
I don’t move, seeing that he’s about to speak. It feels like something is stuck in his throat and forcing its way out.
“Sometimes your fiery temper, the way you talk, reminds me of my little sister, Debbie.”
So Debbie was indeed his sister…I freeze, looking into his eyes. He’s going to confide in me, damn it.
What should I do?
“I’m not sure that’s a compliment,” I say in a light voice to keep him talking. I need to know. I need some answers to my many questions.
“You two were close?” I continue after a few seconds.
He stares at the ceiling, swallows hard, and answers me. “We were two years apart. I was always the protective but annoying big brother. And she was the little rebel of the family. From a very young age, she did exactly the opposite of what my parents ordered her to do. She told me to let her do what she wanted to do, that their orders were meant to be contradicted. But she never really got away with it. She always got caught. And she always found refuge in me, knowing full well that I would always stand up for her.”
“I do that too with Agnes, my little sister,” I say again with a small smile of understanding. Agnes is the specialist in doing stupid things and then coming to nestle in my arms with an adorable little pout.
“When she came to college,” Tucker continues, “I had just entered my second year. Dan and TJ and I were the kings of the campus. We had the best parties, no limits. We’d act tough in front of everyone else and impress the girls at the same time. People started to worship us and sometimes even fear us.”
He taps his index finger on his knee, like a nervous tic. I can’t help but analyze his posture. Nerves must be eating away at him. He is undoubtedly reliving the memory he is about to tell me, and it’s painful for him.
“She was enjoying telling everyone that I was her big brother, she…she was proud.”
He takes a deep breath, probably wondering if he should continue. I look for his gaze but he avoids mine. I’m not thinking and place my fingers on his knee and gently squeeze it, wanting to draw him back in. He does so with a surprised frown, then resumes. “She didn’t quite know that at the time I was a dirty prick who only thought of getting into every possible excess with his gang. She saw me as a nice guy. And then, that year, we decided once again to expand our group. There were challenges, and Matt won them.”
So Matt was friends with Tucker and his gang? Was he part of their group?
“Months went by, and something strange happened. Dan…he started hanging out with my little sister.”
I’m not sure if this is really strange, but I’m holding back my words.
“At the time, I went slightly mad. My sister, damn. And then she wanted to get closer to us. She wanted to mingle with my buddies. I didn’t want her to be immersed in a world filled with booze, sex, and drugs of all kinds. She wanted to mingle with everyone. You can imagine that I refused. Damn it,” he sighs, almost pulling his hair out.
I understand. I probably would have done the same thing in her place. The orgies, the fights, the decadence. I can see why Tucker didn’t want his little sister to fall in.
“I’d forbidden her from going near all that,” Tucker mutters. “But I told you, she was stubborn, she liked to disobey the rules. There was a party at TJ’s. Everything we liked. Everything that gradually disgusted me. She snuck in. Fuck, she was smoking up while I was in the next room, unaware.”
His breathing is getting faster and faster, his fingers are clenching, and I understand that his story is going to get complicated quickly.
“She ran into that son of a bitch Matt, who took her upstairs. And she, she was too high to realize anything. He took advantage of her. He slept with her, and neither I nor Dan knew about it.”
He runs a hand over the back of his neck and stares me straight in the eye:
“When I was in the living room, I saw Matt, in the distance, coming into the room, a satisfied smile stuck on his face. He was joining his buddies, showing them something on his phone. One of them stared at me from across the room, then another. Matt then noticed me and lost his smile.”
He lets out a joyless laugh and my heart misses a beat. I think I understood.
“I could feel that something was wrong. I stood up, and as I heard the voice coming out of the phone, I knew something was fucked up. I realized it was my sister, damn it. This motherfucker was showing his buddies a video of my little sister that he had just fucked. You could see her laughing while he was…”
“I get it,” I whisper softly.
“I went berserk. I beat Matt until he passed out, until his blood covered my shirt, my hands. Yeleen was screaming behind my back. And after a few minutes, I remembered that…well, I…I tried to reach my little sister upstairs. But she wasn’t there anymore, Iris. Dan couldn’t find her either. We were devastated. And then we realized that she had run away. She had run away, ashamed, lost. She drove away, alone, in a terrible state. And she hit a tree.”
I remember my discussion with two students in front of the posters promoting the tests to join the Pack, a few weeks ago. The girls were whispering about how another one had ended up in the morgue at a party. So they were talking about Debbie.
I close my eyes, her words bringing back awful memories. I can only put myself in her shoes, I can only feel the fucking pain.
The man I loved died in a car accident because I let him get behind the wheel.
